Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise a couple of points this morning. I acknowledge there will be statements on the Permanent TSB loan book sale. I hope we can rename them statements on the proposed sale of the Permanent TSB loan book because it has not happened, despite the best efforts of everybody yesterday. Although it has been suggested, the Taoiseach said in the Dáil yesterday that there was no imminent sale of it but then Permanent TSB announced yesterday evening that 14,000 home loans were going up for sale, potentially to a vulture fund, or to somebody else. However, I do not think there will be too many other people looking for them. It is very important that we look at this matter in the round and that we realise that whether it is 14,000 or 20,000 loans - it was 20,000 last week but now there is talk of 14,000 - if one divides that over 40 Dáil constituencies, it works out at about 350 households per constituency. In some areas, there will be more and in other areas there will be less. Every time that happens, a household, a family and an extended family go through huge distress and end up presenting on the local authority list for houses that do not exist or trying to get into the private rented sector where the supply is not available.

Some 75% of Permanent TSB is still owned by the State. The directors should be representing the shareholders but I am not sure they are. The Minister for Finance is the shareholder of three quarters of the company, on behalf of all of us, and it makes no sense for us to potentially throw people out of their houses and then have to rehouse them at enormous cost.

We must look at the long-term sustainability of some loans. I am sure some people have not engaged but I find it hard to believe that Permanent TSB has left people in their homes for ten years without any level of engagement whatsoever. If it has, it is grossly irresponsible that it has left loans in that way without managing them or trying to seek a solution, such as rescheduling debt or examining a proportion of write-down. It is crucial at this point, before the sale goes ahead, that we look at this and try to make sure people in such a situation will not be as badly affected as we think.

The issue has been discussed in-depth in recent days. The Master of the High Court was on the radio this morning talking about it. Deputy John McGuinness was on radio recently and Deputy Michael McGrath was on the radio yesterday. The Taoiseach and Deputy Micheál Martin discussed it yesterday in the Dáil. We are talking about thousands of people. It is not just the 14,000 actual households; it is multiples of the number. Everybody who is associated with the loans will be affected. There is probably not a person in the country who does not know someone who is affected by this. Somebody who has never paid a loan and has completely buried his or her head in the sand needs to be tackled but, equally, we do need to take-----